"When I arrive in my office each morning, I'm greeted by framed photos of Dr. King and Robert F. Kennedy," Cook wrote in his coming out letter. "I don't pretend that writing this puts me in their league. All it does is allow me to look at those pictures and know that I'm doing my part, however small, to help others.
"We pave the sunlit path toward justice together, brick by brick. This is my brick."
This is a beautiful sentiment, but he needs to be careful about his safety. Both of these men who followed the sunlit path were assassinated. I hope Tim's well protected when he travels in countries that have medieval views on this!
What hasn't been said about it at this point? If you're denying all the science what could I possibly say now to make you let go of your homophobia and bigotry?
Unless someone here wants to define it otherwise, 'gay' is a lifestyle choice. And if anyone like myself wants to bring up particular issues that may not sit well with your prepared clichés about murdered babies and religious intolerance then I'm met with a torrent of anger. Which says more about you than it does about me.
Saying gay is a lifestyle choice is just a way of saying that gays are bad people who are making a wrong choice. The people who say that frequently also link it to pederasts or bestiality, which are also "choices."
If you want to try to understand, think about how you'd feel if the PRC took over the world, herded you into a reeducation camp, decided that you should be a woman (to have more women in society) and subsequently announced that you'd be forced to take hormones and undergo surgery to change your physical sex.
Would you have a problem with society telling you what you can be?
And if they said you were breaking the law by refusing, and beat you and locked you up in solitary confinement and printed stories about you that said you were actually a woman and that you were refusing treatment because you were insane, and spread the idea that resistors such as yourself were actually wicked and hurt children and tortured animals, and taught their children to despise you and, whenever possible, to attack and insult you, would you be okay with it all if they held up some Mao book and said that your being a woman was natural and that resisting was evil and repugnant
Would you be all like, "okay! you convinced me! I'll become a woman and you can marry me off to the guy who runs North Korea"?
Or would you have a problem with a bunch of kooks with a history of fucking up the world telling you who you actually are?
I could care less about his choice. He's a great CEO. But having to publicly announce it does nothing but draw unwanted attacks to the Apple Ban because of this. It was always obvious that he was gay. And it didn't matter. But now after this, he puts Apple in a spot where organizations and groups may avoid large product purchases because of this. Because in the real world, no one is going to start buying apple because he's gay. But haters will definitely avoid apple products because he's gay. If Apple products got banned in Russia, that's a large market that could be lost and affect the bottom line for Apple.
I never really understand why gay people have to make it a point to be public. Steve didn't send an open letter announcing he was straight. Personal life should be separate from business life.
Good job at Apple, Mr. Cook. Live long and prosper.
Being an obviously articulate and intelligent person, and now that he has decided to announce to the world his 'pride' at being 'gay', I would be extremely interested for Mr Cook to define what 'being gay' actually means in real terms.
For men, does it mean preferring a man as a sexual partner? Does sex have to be involved, and is it necessary for a new category of 'marriage' to be invented, as opposed to simply having a 'gay' relationship recognised as having the same rights as a traditional marriage.
It troubles me how very young children will come to think about relationships and what criteria they themselves will use to decide if they are in fact 'gay' if respected people like Cook decide to be 'proud' about it but then become overtly coy. If he's going to make a big deal about it, is it reasonable for an interviewer to ask him if he has anal sex with his partner or does that then become a matter of privacy.
Derrida made a big deal about how all words are signs and each sign is the meaning of another sign so that words like 'marriage' have no meaning without all the other words that go with it, one of those words being 'consummate'.
It's all very confusing to me and I cannot imagine how it would be to be a child growing up in an overtly sexualised world to be faced with these issues that no one wants to talk about.
No one is 100% gay or straight. Your view of sexuality is restrictive. There are not too poles but an array of sexualities.
I could care less about his choice. He's a great CEO. But having to publicly announce it does nothing but draw unwanted attacks to the Apple Ban because of this. It was always obvious that he was gay. And it didn't matter. But now after this, he puts Apple in a spot where organizations and groups may avoid large product purchases because of this. Because in the real world, no one is going to start buying apple because he's gay. But haters will definitely avoid apple products because he's gay. If Apple products got banned in Russia, that's a large market that could be lost and affect the bottom line for Apple.
I never really understand why gay people have to make it a point to be public. Steve didn't send an open letter announcing he was straight. Personal life should be separate from business life.
Good job at Apple, Mr. Cook. Live long and prosper.
You mean you "couldn't care less".
Saying that Steve didn't need to say he was straight, that's homophobic.
Being an obviously articulate and intelligent person, and now that he has decided to announce to the world his 'pride' at being 'gay', I would be extremely interested for Mr Cook to define what 'being gay' actually means in real terms.
For men, does it mean preferring a man as a sexual partner? Does sex have to be involved, and is it necessary for a new category of 'marriage' to be invented, as opposed to simply having a 'gay' relationship recognised as having the same rights as a traditional marriage.
*cut*
You know, there is absolutely nothing wrong with finding attraction to anyone of any sex. Wanting to "do" them is a thought you can keep in your head or act upon. The less-savage of the human race know that no means no. We don't police thought crimes ... not yet anyway. (Did you see that recent article about being able to predict if someone is a Liberal or Conservative (by US standards?)) When humans are unable to keep their sexual lust in check, we call them various degrees of mentally disturbed for acting out such acts without consent, and lock the worst of them up when their actions harm others.
This is the thing that regressive regimes and egregious entrenched religious views have on a country. They say "this is wrong, because I said it is wrong" not "This is wrong because it kills people." Even in biblical texts, the entire reason why a lot of stuff regarding pork and shellfish exist in it, is because back in that era, they thought god was punishing them, turns out it was pathogens in the food that could easily be killed just from cooking it. If we kept on not questioning it or having "idiots" of that day ignore the religious people and their teachings we would never have figured out why people die from it. I wonder if the people who were dying from it, just didn't believe in the magical sky dude or just liked to defy authority.
Even homosexuality and bestiality as concepts in biblical writings followed the same concept. People died when they did it, so therefor magical sky dude must have killed them. Turns out that, again, pathogens can be passed between animals, not just by eating them. As a general rule we don't eat people, and human babies have never been seen coming out of other orifices or other animals, so maybe magical sky dude is striking down men who try to procreate with other men and beasts? Who really knows. All we know is that scripture was written through the perspective of people that were afraid of dying, and people lived not very long when they defied the scriptures. To a point at least.
At least in the current age, there are no benefits to being willfully ignorant unless you want to blame your failings on mythical beings. Everyone else is just remains superstitious, even if they don't believe in mythical beings, they may believe in other concepts like luck or feng shui. A lot of the more superstitious stuff isn't as dangerous to everyone, so one could just casually believe in it ,versus devoting their entire lives to blackmailing others into accepting ones beliefs.
And wow did I write a bunch of stuff that nobody cares about here.
TL;DNR: There is no reason to fear homosexuality any more than there is to fear eating properly cooked pork chops.
I could care less about his choice. He's a great CEO. But having to publicly announce it does nothing but draw unwanted attacks to the Apple Ban because of this. It was always obvious that he was gay. And it didn't matter. But now after this, he puts Apple in a spot where organizations and groups may avoid large product purchases because of this. Because in the real world, no one is going to start buying apple because he's gay. But haters will definitely avoid apple products because he's gay. If Apple products got banned in Russia, that's a large market that could be lost and affect the bottom line for Apple.
I never really understand why gay people have to make it a point to be public. Steve didn't send an open letter announcing he was straight. Personal life should be separate from business life.
Good job at Apple, Mr. Cook. Live long and prosper.
Straight people announce and reinforce their identity every day. Professional people of all stripes call attention to their wives or girlfriends and reference their families. Jobs didn't need to announce he was straight, because everyone assumed he was, knew he dated a variety of women (including, apparently Joan Baez) and that he had an initially estranged daughter and that he was married to his current wife. After he died his wife has been referenced repeatedly in his context.
In a society that shames gay relationships, gays can't even acknowledge who they are, people either assume they are straight or wonder about it, and their relationships are often kept quiet.
In the case of Cook, he's now 54 and nobody has ever recognized anyone he has ever dated or had any sort of relationship with. When somebody like Cook becomes ill or dies, in many states their partners aren't allowed to visit them in the hospital and are not recognized as legally entitled to basic rights similar to others.
Do you think that's some sort of equality?
Have gays ever complained that they don't want to hear about some celebrity being married because they get the creeps thinking about vaginal sex? Seriously, when people say things like you just said, it sounds so incredibly ignorant. As if you have never given any thought to how other people might think. Incredibly ignorant.
analogjack your comment "is it reasonable for an interviewer to ask him if he has anal sex with his partner or does that then become a matter of privacy." is quite ridiculous. Do you have any idea of how many heterosexuals have anal sex - do you ask anyone else what kind of sex they have? Since the ancient Greeks (and before) men have been having intimate relations. What kind of sex you have does not define the kind of person you are. I am the least Gay man you are likely to find and have had a lot of Gay friends over the years yet amazingly I haven't turned Gay. What on earth are you worried about? Clearly you have some issues - in case you haven't noticed your moniker contains the letters ANALogjack.
I didn't find his post to be ignorant. It was a fairly intelligent musing of the questions many people pose in their minds; especially children who are discovering their own sexuality. Your post reminds me of how a closed-minded person goes about shutting down intelligent discourse that may veer off into a direction you can't control.
The post was barely coherent and borderline offensive; If you don't see it, that says something about you.
Being an obviously articulate and intelligent person, and now that he has decided to announce to the world his 'pride' at being 'gay', I would be extremely interested for Mr Cook to define what 'being gay' actually means in real terms.
For men, does it mean preferring a man as a sexual partner? Does sex have to be involved, and is it necessary for a new category of 'marriage' to be invented, as opposed to simply having a 'gay' relationship recognised as having the same rights as a traditional marriage.
It troubles me how very young children will come to think about relationships and what criteria they themselves will use to decide if they are in fact 'gay' if respected people like Cook decide to be 'proud' about it but then become overtly coy. If he's going to make a big deal about it, is it reasonable for an interviewer to ask him if he has anal sex with his partner or does that then become a matter of privacy.
Derrida made a big deal about how all words are signs and each sign is the meaning of another sign so that words like 'marriage' have no meaning without all the other words that go with it, one of those words being 'consummate'.
It's all very confusing to me and I cannot imagine how it would be to be a child growing up in an overtly sexualised world to be faced with these issues that no one wants to talk about.
Seriously, just come out already. If you think it's reasonable for an interviewer to ask him specific questions about anal sex, that says a lot about you and nothing about him. Why are the gay haters always so fascinated with gay sex??? Hmmmm, I wonder...
And newsflash, you homophobe, plenty of heterosexuals have anal sex.
What troubles me is how many ignorant people like yourself are out there. As an obvious heterosexual, is it appropriate for anyone to ask you if you eat your wife's pussy, or if you masterbate to photos in magazines, or if you do it doggy style? Or what your children would think if they knew? Go get a life and STFU.
Thing is, he's NOT an obvious heterosexual. The lady doth protest too much.
The bible says homosexuality is sin. God created man and woman to be together. Wether it's 2014 or the dawn of man, that is simply so.
While I don't approve of Tim Cooks choices, God loves him no less.
Everyone gives account for their life when it is over. Time will have His day too. Until that day, the Lord will extend grace and mercy and opportunity to be forgiven, clean, and in right relationship with The God who made him. But the choice will always be Tims to make.
I am always sad to see the name calling, the insults, and even the violent protests. It's never right, no matter what the case.
That said, every human has a choice to make for themselves. Tim Cook has made his choices. So be it.
I respect him as not only a businessman, but he actually does seem to be a genuinely nice guy and is making the right choices to actually help the people he serves as well as those he serves with.
He decided to announce his preference to the world. So be it. He has a platform and he used it. For better or for worse.
While I don't see the "brick" he used as anything related to justice (being good versus evil and right from wrong), it was definitely a reminder to the world that FREEDOM is alive and well in the USA. I don't believe the man is a hero for his announcement. But he is no villain. He simply stated the truth.
Ignoring the religious aspect of your message, you seem to be confused about "choice" and "preference". Being gay is no more a choice than being white or black. You're born that way; you can't "choose" to have sexual feelings for the opposite-sex if you're gay, no more than you can "choose" to be sexually attracted to the same sex if your straight. It's just who you are.
I am heterosexual but I don't understand why people find this so hard to grasp.
Heard of America? It's a place where the NSA, a local enforcement agency of sorts, has a complaint about Apple putting children at risk for not allowing them to read all iMessages.
"This puts kids at risk" is often a very clear sign you're trying to force in some rule/law that should not be there. But not always. That's what we have a critical mind for.
The bible says homosexuality is sin. God created man and woman to be together. Wether it's 2014 or the dawn of man, that is simply so.
While I don't approve of Tim Cooks choices, God loves him no less.
Everyone gives account for their life when it is over. Time will have His day too. Until that day, the Lord will extend grace and mercy and opportunity to be forgiven, clean, and in right relationship with The God who made him. But the choice will always be Tims to make.
I am always sad to see the name calling, the insults, and even the violent protests. It's never right, no matter what the case.
That said, every human has a choice to make for themselves. Tim Cook has made his choices. So be it.
I respect him as not only a businessman, but he actually does seem to be a genuinely nice guy and is making the right choices to actually help the people he serves as well as those he serves with.
He decided to announce his preference to the world. So be it. He has a platform and he used it. For better or for worse.
While I don't see the "brick" he used as anything related to justice (being good versus evil and right from wrong), it was definitely a reminder to the world that FREEDOM is alive and well in the USA. I don't believe the man is a hero for his announcement. But he is no villain. He simply stated the truth.
Oh yes, by all means, let's live our lives according to the hypocritical book of Bronze Age mythology glorifying Santa Claus for grown ups. And then let's be really judgemental while proclaiming that we're not, hiding behind our fairy tale religion while we spit our venom.
Ignoring the religious aspect of your message, you seem to be confused about "choice" and "preference". Being gay is no more a choice than being white or black. You're born that way; you can't "choose" to have sexual feelings for the opposite-sex if you're gay, no more than you can "choose" to be sexually attracted to the same sex if your straight. It's just who you are.
I am heterosexual but I don't understand why people find this so hard to grasp.
You could also be asexual, bisexual, or somewhere else on the sliding scale. Why should we put humans in a box based on a 6000 years old tradition, later put in written form by politicians (yes, the Bible (Old Testament) was designed to enforce the rule of the Kings of Israel, at a point when Israel was a world power)?
Ignoring the religious aspect of your message, you seem to be confused about "choice" and "preference". Being gay is no more a choice than being white or black. You're born that way; you can't "choose" to have sexual feelings for the opposite-sex if you're gay, no more than you can "choose" to be sexually attracted to the same sex if your straight. It's just who you are.
I am heterosexual but I don't understand why people find this so hard to grasp.
The same reason some parents let their kids die instead of taking them to the doctor. Because sweet baby Jeebus said so.
Comments
"When I arrive in my office each morning, I'm greeted by framed photos of Dr. King and Robert F. Kennedy," Cook wrote in his coming out letter. "I don't pretend that writing this puts me in their league. All it does is allow me to look at those pictures and know that I'm doing my part, however small, to help others.
"We pave the sunlit path toward justice together, brick by brick. This is my brick."
This is a beautiful sentiment, but he needs to be careful about his safety. Both of these men who followed the sunlit path were assassinated. I hope Tim's well protected when he travels in countries that have medieval views on this!
Man, what did I read. Is that insanity in your text?
How can we know if you do not elucidate, or at least give us some clue as to the machinations of your mind.
Nope.
Nope.
Unless you can say more than 'nope', I say 'yup.
If it is not, then how do you explain a supposedly 'straight' person who later claims to be 'gay' and vice versa? Was it something they ate?
What hasn't been said about it at this point? If you're denying all the science what could I possibly say now to make you let go of your homophobia and bigotry?
Nope.
Unless someone here wants to define it otherwise, 'gay' is a lifestyle choice. And if anyone like myself wants to bring up particular issues that may not sit well with your prepared clichés about murdered babies and religious intolerance then I'm met with a torrent of anger. Which says more about you than it does about me.
Saying gay is a lifestyle choice is just a way of saying that gays are bad people who are making a wrong choice. The people who say that frequently also link it to pederasts or bestiality, which are also "choices."
If you want to try to understand, think about how you'd feel if the PRC took over the world, herded you into a reeducation camp, decided that you should be a woman (to have more women in society) and subsequently announced that you'd be forced to take hormones and undergo surgery to change your physical sex.
Would you have a problem with society telling you what you can be?
And if they said you were breaking the law by refusing, and beat you and locked you up in solitary confinement and printed stories about you that said you were actually a woman and that you were refusing treatment because you were insane, and spread the idea that resistors such as yourself were actually wicked and hurt children and tortured animals, and taught their children to despise you and, whenever possible, to attack and insult you, would you be okay with it all if they held up some Mao book and said that your being a woman was natural and that resisting was evil and repugnant
Would you be all like, "okay! you convinced me! I'll become a woman and you can marry me off to the guy who runs North Korea"?
Or would you have a problem with a bunch of kooks with a history of fucking up the world telling you who you actually are?
I never really understand why gay people have to make it a point to be public. Steve didn't send an open letter announcing he was straight. Personal life should be separate from business life.
Good job at Apple, Mr. Cook. Live long and prosper.
No one is 100% gay or straight. Your view of sexuality is restrictive. There are not too poles but an array of sexualities.
You mean you "couldn't care less".
Saying that Steve didn't need to say he was straight, that's homophobic.
You know, there is absolutely nothing wrong with finding attraction to anyone of any sex. Wanting to "do" them is a thought you can keep in your head or act upon. The less-savage of the human race know that no means no. We don't police thought crimes ... not yet anyway. (Did you see that recent article about being able to predict if someone is a Liberal or Conservative (by US standards?)) When humans are unable to keep their sexual lust in check, we call them various degrees of mentally disturbed for acting out such acts without consent, and lock the worst of them up when their actions harm others.
This is the thing that regressive regimes and egregious entrenched religious views have on a country. They say "this is wrong, because I said it is wrong" not "This is wrong because it kills people." Even in biblical texts, the entire reason why a lot of stuff regarding pork and shellfish exist in it, is because back in that era, they thought god was punishing them, turns out it was pathogens in the food that could easily be killed just from cooking it. If we kept on not questioning it or having "idiots" of that day ignore the religious people and their teachings we would never have figured out why people die from it. I wonder if the people who were dying from it, just didn't believe in the magical sky dude or just liked to defy authority.
Even homosexuality and bestiality as concepts in biblical writings followed the same concept. People died when they did it, so therefor magical sky dude must have killed them. Turns out that, again, pathogens can be passed between animals, not just by eating them. As a general rule we don't eat people, and human babies have never been seen coming out of other orifices or other animals, so maybe magical sky dude is striking down men who try to procreate with other men and beasts? Who really knows. All we know is that scripture was written through the perspective of people that were afraid of dying, and people lived not very long when they defied the scriptures. To a point at least.
At least in the current age, there are no benefits to being willfully ignorant unless you want to blame your failings on mythical beings. Everyone else is just remains superstitious, even if they don't believe in mythical beings, they may believe in other concepts like luck or feng shui. A lot of the more superstitious stuff isn't as dangerous to everyone, so one could just casually believe in it ,versus devoting their entire lives to blackmailing others into accepting ones beliefs.
And wow did I write a bunch of stuff that nobody cares about here.
TL;DNR: There is no reason to fear homosexuality any more than there is to fear eating properly cooked pork chops.
I could care less about his choice. He's a great CEO. But having to publicly announce it does nothing but draw unwanted attacks to the Apple Ban because of this. It was always obvious that he was gay. And it didn't matter. But now after this, he puts Apple in a spot where organizations and groups may avoid large product purchases because of this. Because in the real world, no one is going to start buying apple because he's gay. But haters will definitely avoid apple products because he's gay. If Apple products got banned in Russia, that's a large market that could be lost and affect the bottom line for Apple.
I never really understand why gay people have to make it a point to be public. Steve didn't send an open letter announcing he was straight. Personal life should be separate from business life.
Good job at Apple, Mr. Cook. Live long and prosper.
Straight people announce and reinforce their identity every day. Professional people of all stripes call attention to their wives or girlfriends and reference their families. Jobs didn't need to announce he was straight, because everyone assumed he was, knew he dated a variety of women (including, apparently Joan Baez) and that he had an initially estranged daughter and that he was married to his current wife. After he died his wife has been referenced repeatedly in his context.
In a society that shames gay relationships, gays can't even acknowledge who they are, people either assume they are straight or wonder about it, and their relationships are often kept quiet.
In the case of Cook, he's now 54 and nobody has ever recognized anyone he has ever dated or had any sort of relationship with. When somebody like Cook becomes ill or dies, in many states their partners aren't allowed to visit them in the hospital and are not recognized as legally entitled to basic rights similar to others.
Do you think that's some sort of equality?
Have gays ever complained that they don't want to hear about some celebrity being married because they get the creeps thinking about vaginal sex? Seriously, when people say things like you just said, it sounds so incredibly ignorant. As if you have never given any thought to how other people might think. Incredibly ignorant.
When did you choose to be straight?
I didn't find his post to be ignorant. It was a fairly intelligent musing of the questions many people pose in their minds; especially children who are discovering their own sexuality. Your post reminds me of how a closed-minded person goes about shutting down intelligent discourse that may veer off into a direction you can't control.
The post was barely coherent and borderline offensive; If you don't see it, that says something about you.
Seriously, just come out already. If you think it's reasonable for an interviewer to ask him specific questions about anal sex, that says a lot about you and nothing about him. Why are the gay haters always so fascinated with gay sex??? Hmmmm, I wonder...
And newsflash, you homophobe, plenty of heterosexuals have anal sex.
Thing is, he's NOT an obvious heterosexual. The lady doth protest too much.
Ignoring the religious aspect of your message, you seem to be confused about "choice" and "preference". Being gay is no more a choice than being white or black. You're born that way; you can't "choose" to have sexual feelings for the opposite-sex if you're gay, no more than you can "choose" to be sexually attracted to the same sex if your straight. It's just who you are.
I am heterosexual but I don't understand why people find this so hard to grasp.
you can say, the law is to protect the children.
Heard of America? It's a place where the NSA, a local enforcement agency of sorts, has a complaint about Apple putting children at risk for not allowing them to read all iMessages.
"This puts kids at risk" is often a very clear sign you're trying to force in some rule/law that should not be there. But not always. That's what we have a critical mind for.
Oh yes, by all means, let's live our lives according to the hypocritical book of Bronze Age mythology glorifying Santa Claus for grown ups. And then let's be really judgemental while proclaiming that we're not, hiding behind our fairy tale religion while we spit our venom.
Ignoring the religious aspect of your message, you seem to be confused about "choice" and "preference". Being gay is no more a choice than being white or black. You're born that way; you can't "choose" to have sexual feelings for the opposite-sex if you're gay, no more than you can "choose" to be sexually attracted to the same sex if your straight. It's just who you are.
I am heterosexual but I don't understand why people find this so hard to grasp.
You could also be asexual, bisexual, or somewhere else on the sliding scale. Why should we put humans in a box based on a 6000 years old tradition, later put in written form by politicians (yes, the Bible (Old Testament) was designed to enforce the rule of the Kings of Israel, at a point when Israel was a world power)?
The same reason some parents let their kids die instead of taking them to the doctor. Because sweet baby Jeebus said so.